Freeeeeedoooooooooooom!!

By  on  

One gangsta policy used by many domain registrars is to hold on to a domain for months after its expiration for "convenience and security purposes." Sure. Right. Uh huh.

One such registrar is the shady corporation called Network Solutions. Network Solutions is as evil of a domain registrar as there is. We've seen much evidence of that within the past few months.

I've had a keen eye on the domain DAVID-WALSH.COM for quite a while. Week after week, every WHOIS lookup I made resulted in a "Pending Deletion" message. I'd only been checking about once a week so as not arouse too much attention from NetSol.

Last week, the domain was finally cut free. It only took a few months. Anyways, the domain is now mine, all mine!

Have you had any issue with Network Solutions, or am I the only one? Share your experience.

Recent Features

  • By
    From Webcam to Animated GIF: the Secret Behind chat.meatspac.es!

    My team mate Edna Piranha is not only an awesome hacker; she's also a fantastic philosopher! Communication and online interactions is a subject that has kept her mind busy for a long time, and it has also resulted in a bunch of interesting experimental projects...

  • By
    Create a CSS Flipping Animation

    CSS animations are a lot of fun; the beauty of them is that through many simple properties, you can create anything from an elegant fade in to a WTF-Pixar-would-be-proud effect. One CSS effect somewhere in between is the CSS flip effect, whereby there's...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Add Site Screenshots for External Links Using MooTools Tooltips

    Before you send your user to an unknown external website, why not provide them a screenshot of the site via a tooltip so they may preview the upcoming page? Here's how you can do just that using MooTools. The MooTools JavaScript The first step is to grab...

  • By
    CSS Scoped Styles

    There are plenty of awesome new attributes we've gotten during the HTML5 revolution:  placeholder, download, hidden, and more.  Each of these attributes provides us a different level of control over an element on the page, but there's a new element attribute that allows...

Discussion

  1. MH

    Hi David,

    The “pending deletion” period for a domain name is governed by ICANN and the gTLD Registries (for .COM and .NET domains, that would be Verisign), not by Registrars like Network Solutions.

    For a diagram of the lifecycle of an Internet domain name, see: http://www.icann.org/registrars/gtld-lifecycle.htm

    -MH

  2. Thank you for the explanation MH. I was probably harsh to blame this on NetSol, but I hadn’t seen it before.

    I will say I’ve had quite bad experiences with them though. Thanks for clearing that up!

  3. Hmmm… never had a problem yet with NetSol. Congrats on getting your desired domain name, though. You aren’t moving again are you? ;)

  4. No, not moving again. The first time was too much of a pain!

  5. my friend just stumbled on their site last March 2. and got her domain under their ‘hostage’ just minutes after then, and she had to keep a guard on the domain since that day.

    I will ask her again whether her chosen domain has been released or not, for this is already the fifth day and they claimed it was up to 4 days. we will see …

  6. Aaron S.

    Network Solutions is indeed evil.

    Several years ago, before I knew anything, I decided I wanted to transfer my domain away from netsol. A buddy of mine gave me bad advice. “Just backorder it with godaddy,” he said, as the domain was about to expire. So I backordered it and let it expire.

    The next thing I knew, some shady company had snatched it right up and charged me $150 to get it back. :( Later I did some research and discovered that shady domain snatcher was actually some subsidiary of Network Solutions.

    I’ve hated them ever since. Needless to say, I no longer have any domains registered there and I learned how to do proper domain transfers.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!